Remember the picture of the cottonmouth snake in the previous blog? It had been acting very aggressively, obviously protecting its territory in the little marshy area beside the pond. Because its territory was so close to the path we and the animals use all the time, my husband decided it had to go, and he shot it.
When he went back up to the house, he found the electrician there, and took him back down to have a look at the snake. They lifted it out of the marshy area, and brought it up to measure it. It was four feet long.
Then the electrician said, "Wait, it's got something in its mouth." He started pulling....and out came another snake!
Here's the snake with the other snake protruding part-way from its mouth...
A closeup of the same gruesome picture. (I did warn you.)
And both snakes together. When they got the second snake all the way out, they measured it at three feet.
We think we know what happened. Remember I said that we found a brown water snake dead beside the pond with its head pecked through, presumably by a protective parent-goose? Well, we threw it into the marshy area to get it off the path. Looks like the cottonmouth ate it.
Ewwwww. (That's a girl's response, by the way. I wasn't there while my husband and the electrician were doing their measuring, etc, but I'm pretty sure they didn't say "Ewwwww." Probably something more like...."Cool.")
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Wow, how interesting! I don't blame you a bit. I save all the snakes I can or move them away from the house a bit but very poisonous snakes are a danger to livestock. Goats are very curious and I have seen more than a few posts on various goat groups about goats getting bitten, usually on the nose or face. It is surprising goats don't instinctively know better but sometimes they don't.
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